With the new issue of Empire Magazine hitting newsstands, they’ve given us a new glimpse at two upcoming action films. First we have a look at Pete Travis’ (Vantage Point) update to Judge Dredd, simply titled Dredd and written by 28 Days Later scribe Alex Garland. We’ve already see many pictures of Karl Urban, but the pics from 2000AD show off The Wackness and Juno star Olivia Thirlby as Cassandra Anderson. It looks a bit silly at first glance to see Thirlby in an action film, decked out in that costume, but we’ll have to get used to it, as she also appears in The Darkest Hour later this year. Check out the pictures above and below.

DREDD takes us to the wild streets of Mega City One, the lone oasis of quasi-civilization on Cursed Earth. Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is the most feared of elite Street Judges, with the power to enforce the law, sentence offenders and execute them on the spot – if necessary. The endlessly inventive mind of writer Alex Garland and the frenetic vision of director Peter Travis bring DREDD to life as a futuristic neo-noir action film that returns the celebrated character to the dark, visceral incarnation from John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s revered comic strip.

Dredd hits theaters September 21st, 2012.

We also have some low-quality, poorly shot photos from Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. You may wonder why in the heck we are bringing to light a sequel to a lackluster original. The answer is simple: Crank directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor have stepped in to helm this one. Judging from some of the Comic-Can panel (highlights below), this will be another crazy ride. Oh, and the bad-ass Idris Elba also joins Nicolas Cage this time around. Check out the stills below as well via CBM, and we’ll update when better versions arrive. Ciaran Hinds, Violante Placido, and Johnny Whitworth also star.

Update: They have now arrived in hi-res, from the same source.

Synopsis:

The film sees Johnny Blaze, aka Ghost Rider (Cage), hiding out in remote Eastern Europe and struggling to repress his curse. Blaze is recruited by a sect to take on the devil (Ciaran Hinds), who wants to take over his mortal son’s body on the kid’s birthday.